After reading R. Bruce Josten’s column, I’m left with several thoughts.

First, if the health care system can be fixed by free-market systems, why hasn’t that happened in the last 75 years? And second, if his stance is so powerful, why does he have to include references to entitlement programs bankrupting the federal government? The biggest issue of cost to taxpayers are the yearly enormous increase in medical costs — costs driven by free-market health care companies and the provider networks that support hikes in medical care costs. As Josten might well know, Medicaid comes with built-in limits, unlike private health network providers. The true drivers of health care costs are those very same free-market forces he desires to turn loose on us.

Scott Strohmeier, Arvada

This letter was published in the March 18 edition.

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Scott, the answer to your first question is, health insurance wasn’t able to be bought across state lines. That would have allowed free market forces to really work. As to your second question, you don’t think entitlements are bankrupting the country? Well, you are wrong. And why do you think health care costs are being driven up. Could it be all the bureaucracy and the endless paperwork. Do you think we might be better off with health savings accounts and letting people negotiate with their own doctors. If you go to the doctor for the common cold, your premiums will go up. That should be paid for out of pocket.

For the smaller group, those w/out insurance, Obamacare works. But for the rest of us, we are doing fine for the most part. UAW has thousands of workers. When they absorb the extra $69.00 per employee, that will be crushing. How will that help employers or the middle class?

irisman

We really don’t have a free market in health care. We have what the traffic will bear. If you land in the emergency room, you don’t have the opportunity to shop around and find the lowest price. Insurance companies are all about profit maximization, and they have an army of executives who get multimillion dollar salaries, and who have an incentive to deny care whenever possible. Similarly providers and labs have no incentive to reduce their fees. If they keep their fees high they would lose a few patients, but so what. Most people will have to pay the price. There aren’t a lot of good doctors out there who are really hungry for business, and people can’t simply decide to become physicians just because there’s a demand for them. Medical schools have limits on the number of students they can enroll. If I want to get into the home repair business, I can just decide to do so, and put an ad in the classified section. Not so with heath care.

guest

I agree with your first statement that we don’t have a free market in health care. We lost that with the creation of Blue Cross and Blue Shield. When you use other people’s money to pay for something, the consumer doesn’t worry about the cost and rather than trying to fix that, Obamacare has more things provided at no charge. The limits on medical schools is an artificial one. In a free market we would have more medical schools and fewer law schools.

Robtf777

The issue has NEVER been about the “free market”……but “government control” over every aspect of our lives.

Health Care is just one attempt to get The Government to control out lives.

The now overturned New York “over-16-ounce non-diet soft drink ban” was just another attempt to have The Government control our lives

Every attempt to have We The People rely on The Government to provide for every aspect of our lives……is simply an attempt to have The Government have more and more control over every aspect of our lives.

Democracy and Capitalism and Free Markets and Charities and GOD are actually what turned the 13 Colonies into the Greatest Superpower ever to exist on this planet……and pretty quickly.

Communism and Socialism and Government-Control and Atheism are actually what turned the USSR into……nothing……since it both rose and fell within 100 years.

But…..apparently……a lot of Liberals look at the USSR……and want the US to be……just like they are.

GregoryR

Of course you never seem to object when the government tries to control our lives by forcing moralism you agree with down our throats. How very odd…

primafacie

No, the free market hasn’t “fixed” health care, no more than it’s “fixed” real estate, labor or the proliferation of rap (as opposed to music).

Of course, it’s not designed to.

What the free market does is allows two willing participants to exchange goods and/or services for money or barter. And it becomes less of a free market when an outside force, in this case federal and state governments, dictate some of the terms of that exchange.

The ideologically pure position here just isn’t going to work – its basic Econ 101. But that’s the issue, isn’t it: the ideologues have never taken an Econ class in their lives.

Best,

D

ThePyro

Uhhhhh…Mr. Strohmeier, the health care sector hasn’t been a “free market” since at least the end of World War II, when states started regulating what could and couldn’t be sold in their particular area. Even before that, dating to the late 1920s, the programs were driven by what employers/unions/coops were willing to pay for or what doctors/hospitals were willing to sell in the guise of “insurance”. And all that was before the Feds started getting really involved in the 1960s, and mega-insurers like the Blue Cross Blue Shield Associated were created at about the same time.

When the purchaser/user of an item has so little influence on how an item or service is developed, procured and delivered, it can no longer be considered a “free market”. What we have is a debacle that’ll take at least as many years to sort out as it took to create.

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